Martya's Happiness
by GoldenRoya
Summary: Martya reflects on her life thus far; her family, her husband, and her growing domestic bliss.


_Just a short little blurb that hijacked my muse one night. The timeline is somewhere between _Diplomatic Immunity_ and _Cryoburn_. Maybe I'll do more with it later; depends on which neurons randomly fire up. Anyway, read, enjoy, and review! _

Supper was nearly ready, and Martya Borgos straightened her shoulders in preparation for the most arduous task of all – that of getting her family to the table in time to eat before the food got cold. She mentally blessed her brother-not-in-law Mark for his wedding gift to them – serving dishes with the latest in high-tech stay-warm circuits as well as a full eight-person serving set of dishes, bowls, and glassware with similar top-of-the-line wiring. "I know how impossible it is to pry that husband of yours away from anything," the younger Vorkosigan had said. "At least you can have warm food when you finally _do_ get him to the table." Martya had suspected her sister's hand in the gift choice, but Kareen stoutly denied this, and Martya was disinclined to doubt her. However the gift came about, Martya was glad to have them. She'd felt very galactic when she first used them; now, however, she was just glad to be assured of hot food no matter what time she tracked Enrique down.

She paused at the door, staring down the steps into the lab. It had never occurred to either of the couple to live in a house _without_ an attached laboratory. Enrique wanted to be near his work, and Martya wanted to be near her husband. It all worked out spectacularly, though many people – like Miles – often verbally pondered what it was like to share close living space with upwards of a million bugs at any one time.

Ah well. It was the price they paid for happiness, and Martya was near as attached to the 'girls' as her husband was, these days. Which was, actually, far less now that he had two real girls to lavish his attention on. "Genetic manipulation is all well and good, but human progeny is far more exciting than entomology," Enrique had confided to her not so long ago, his dark eyes bright as they watched the girls giggling, feeding the butter bugs.

"Enrique? Girls?" she called, checking around the floor and under the lab benches. But it was silent. Nothing. Nobody. Even the new, experimental crop of butter bugs was quiet in their hutches. Martya sighed, and, not for the first time, vowed to subcutaneously insert ping tracers into her family. A muffled shout from the backyard curtailed this thought, and she followed the sound upstairs and outside, where she found her husband flat on his back in the grass, two small girls swarming all over him. He was laughing, holding up his hands and attempting to surrender, but his progeny was having none of it, laughing and shrieking as their daddy swept them up in his arms in a kissing tackle. Martya leaned against the door jamb, grinning to watch this familial display. Many had doubted that Enrique would make a fit husband, much less _father_. Martya had been thrilled to prove them all wrong. It had been Enrique who proposed children first, and Enrique who had insisted that their eldest be a girl – "as fine a flower as her mother." They'd started Erica right away, the uterine replicator prepped and ready almost as soon as the honeymoon was over. Then, three months into her gestation, Martya had made the pleasant discovery that she was pregnant with a body birth.

Enrique was ecstatic. "Twins!" he'd declared. "I have always wanted twins!" Dark haired, dark-eyed Maria was born naturally, just a few months after they'd popped the lid on her blonde-haired, blue-eyed sister, and the pair had been inseparable ever since. They were both scarily-smart like their father, but they shared their mother's ardent athleticism. Their earliest playground had been the lab, and Enrique didn't seem to understand the concept of 'age-appropriate-learning.' Not that it mattered; the girls understood far more than Martya thought even their father suspected.

"Dinner!" Martya finally called, and three heads popped up. The four-year old girls swarmed into the house, a hoarde all by themselves. "Wash your hands!" Enrique called after them, stealing a kiss from his wife in the doorway. His hand caressed her still-small belly, and she smilled, The doctor's appointment had been this afternoon, and he'd assured them that everything was progressing normally with Girl Number Three. Enrique and Martya were already arm wrestling over names.

Then the blissful moment was over and the Borgos family descended on the dinner table. Martya looked over her loved ones heaping food onto their plates and smiled. Life could be strange – God knows, she'd lived through enough oddities herself – but it was good.

"Erica, no throwing peas! Maria, _one_ roll! Enrique, stop encouraging them!"

"Aw, _Mom!_"

"Mar! Catch!"

"Ew! Ewewew! I don't _like_ peas, 'Rica!"

"Quit being such a wimp!"

Ah yes. Life. Very good, but with a family like this, _never_ boring.


End file.
